


Domesticated

by kototyph



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (Temporary) Major Character Death, ... Does this Make Meg Gaston, Alternate Universe - Canon, Animal Transformation, Community: deancasbigbang, Dreamwalking, Fractured Fairy Tale, Humor, I Swear to God I Did Not Mean to Make a Beauty and the Beast Knock-Off, M/M, Romance, What the Hell's Happened to Dean?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-24
Updated: 2012-10-24
Packaged: 2017-11-16 17:51:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/542191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kototyph/pseuds/kototyph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being the only angel in the entire Pacific Northwest can be tiring, even if these days Castiel spends more of his time shoveling manure than fighting off the hordes of hell. It's an occupational hazard, unfortunately; he earns most of his living rehabilitating wild animals a few miles outside Spokane. Wild animals like Dean, for instance— a mountain lion who's entirely too smart for his own good. There's a man in Castiel's dreams named Dean too, but that part's  just a huge coincidence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Light fades, light returns. Times change. The moon swells and wanes in due course. The stars wheel overhead. The trees grow, wither, lie dormant, spring forth anew. The world is dying and being reborn every day, every minute, a constant state of entropy and animation that circles in on itself, the snake eating its tail, an endless ouroboros.

"Nearly over, nearly there," he murmurs soothingly, one gloved hand stroking over his patient's heaving side. "Nearly done. Just one more push."

She moans in protest, rolling her body restlessly in the dry straw and breathing in huge rasping gasps, neck arched at an angle that looks forced and desperate.

"One more," he promises. "One more, just one, right— _now—"_

Her hoarse bellow shakes dust off the rafters above, and in a sudden rush of bloody fluids Castiel cradles in his hands a tiny, perfect seal pup. It's the second of twins, very unusual for the species and a development he hadn't expected, but surprise is immediately pushed aside by concern. The little pup isn't breathing, warm and still where it lies across his palms, and he holds it carefully to his chest as he fumbles in the straw for his emergency kit.

Nestled in the bedding next to him, the exhausted mother makes a weak, questioning noise. "Everything's fine," he tells her, and begins what passes for CPR on a thing so small and new.

Its heart remains unmoved, its airways stubbornly closed, and Castiel imagines what he no longer has the ability to see: a soul, flame-bright and fragile, guttering like a candle in a high wind. About to be lost to the world forever. In the next breath he gives, he exhales some of himself as well. The sharp, brilliantly white shine reflects wetly in the mother seal's eyes, her head turned to watch him. The tiny back bows, tail giving a single wriggling twitch before it opens its mouth and squalls, as loud as its mother, twice as loud as its older brother.

A cheer goes up from the watching women crowding around the sides of the stall, and Castiel starts and stares around him, startled by the sudden reminder that there is more to the world than this one bawling newborn, eyes still tightly closed, fur already drying in stiff spikes.

Beside him, a slit appears in the broad belly of the seal mother, and a pale, exhausted woman crawls out of her first skin. Castiel carefully transfers his squirming armful, and in her embrace the pup's skin also peels back, to reveal a little sister to the baby boy tucked into the curve of the woman's other arm.

" _Anhel_ ," she calls him, and gives him a dry, brief kiss on the forehead. The pups begin to fuss, and she pulls back to tend to them.

The world turns, the snake eats its tail, and spurred by some secret signal hidden in its coils the women of the tribe pour into the narrow stall like a rising tide. They gather his things and sweep him out and away from mother and children, kit, bloodied gloves, filthy clothes and all.

* * *

Castiel washes in a farmhouse up the road, soap cracked and water ice-cold, swirling pink and viscous down the drain. Outside the window the ocean roils in the fragile predawn light, waves nearly the same color as the craggy black rocks they rage against. He's been in Oregon nearly three days, two longer than he meant to be, but for the sake of that small unseen soul cannot regret it.

Someone knocks at the mudroom door, and Castiel is escorted to the great hall, strange and fantastic totems rising twenty feet to its roof. The selkie king presents him with a very large, very dead salmon, and he receives it with grave seriousness; this tribe is poor and proud, the sea providing their only bounty. The fish, and their gratitude, are the only things they can afford to give him, and he waves away all other offers.

True dawn finds him on the verge of exhausted sleep, lulled by the asthmatic rumble of an ancient Jeep's engine. The salmon is sitting in a borrowed cooler under his feet, bouncing and jiggling at every pothole as one of the young men of the tribe drives him from the coast to the nearest bus depot. The selkie seems undeterred by Castiel's growing inability to hold up his end of their conversation, and projects his voice over the grinding beat of the local pop station playing on the radio.

Despite the noise, Castiel has slipped into a light doze when his cell phone starts vibrating, a buzz like angry bees emanating from his pocket. It's a number without a name; unsurprising, as he's never bothered to save any numbers besides Claire's. It does, however, look familiar.

" _Castiel_ ," Uriel says in his ear, and Castiel blinks.

"Oh. Is it that time already?"

* * *

The young man sees him onto a bus, and the bus takes Castiel across the border into Washington and up into the mountains, driver navigating the sharp switchbacks with death-defying alacrity. This shuttle is unfortunately the fastest mode of transportation now available to Castiel; his wings are no longer strong enough to bear his weight, and it takes him more than eight hours to arrive in the city. It's another half-hour in a cab before he reaches the gates of the Cold Creek Wildlife Sanctuary.

Being the only angel in the entire Pacific Northwest can be tiring, even if these days Castiel spends more of his time shoveling animal dung than fighting off the hordes of hell. It's an occupational hazard, unfortunately; he earns most of his living rehabilitating wild animals at a few miles outside Spokane.

He's not a veterinarian and has no formal training in animal husbandry, but he has had thousands of years to acquaint himself with humankind and the species over which they have dominion. Castiel had decided fairly early in their separation from Heaven to devote himself entirely to God's lesser creatures; at the time, he'd told Uriel it was because he could not bear to see so large a part of Creation ignored for others, and this was accepted as a pious and sensible reason. In reality, Castiel finds dealing with the equally stranded denizens of hell distasteful, and humanity has consistently baffled him since the commission of original sin. Really, the beasts and birds of the earth are so much more straightforward and easy to deal with.

He's been at the sanctuary nearly two decades, now. It's a bit strange to think he might soon have to leave it. Castiel wonders, as the cab pulls up the guard station at the entrance, where Uriel might send him next.

His official title is Mr. James Novak, Director of Volunteer Services, and it's by that name the security guard greets him. "Have a fun trip to the seal farm?" the man asks, leaning out the station window as the gates clank slowly open.

For all anyone at Cold Creek knows, Castiel was merely visiting a marine mammal sister shelter, and the selkies prefer to keep it that way. "It was certainly... interesting," Castiel answers, and the guard chuckles as he waves the cab through.

His trailer is as he left it, the last in a row of single- and double-wides that serve as staff housing, just skirting the edge of the woods and Mount Spokane State Park. He overpays the cab driver and hauls his kit and the salmon in its cooler up his rickety wooden steps and into the cool dimness of the mobile home.

It's bare— " _Sterile_ ," Anna had sniffed. "Would it kill you to put up some photos?"— but Castiel likes the order of it, the clarity of visual space. It's a straight shot from the door to his kitchen, and he's just transferred the fish to the refrigerator when there's a frantic knocking at his door.

_"Mr. Novak! Mr. Novak, are you home?"_

Castiel gives his bedroom door a wistful glance.

_"Mr. Novak?"_

"I'm coming," he calls back, and lets the fridge door close with a dull _thock_.

* * *

"I just didn't know what to do," Andy frets, standing with Castiel beside the transport truck. In the back, a wooden crate yowls and hisses, noise enough that half the staff have gathered around the vehicle to stare and murmur between themselves in low voices. "I mean, I would have gotten Meg, but she's supposed to be off and the last time I called on a vacation day she said she'd make me eat my—"

"It's fine. Really," Castiel says tiredly.

The attending veterinarian sees Castiel and jumps down from the bed of the truck, a tranquilizer gun balanced over her shoulder. "Jimmy, excellent," she says brusquely. "Can you work with him? He's weak and badly injured, but sedation wore off during transport. Any more and we're risking an overdose coma when he does go down."

The crate is keening like bansidhe now, the animal inside obviously in a great deal of pain and stress. "Don't expect miracles," Castiel warns, and belatedly realizes the irony as he pushes forward to the tailgate.

He hoists himself into the bed, crawling forward on his hands and knees. The mindless howling reaches another level of panic and the crate shudders, rocking violently forward as the animal throws itself against the side. It's well secured, or it very well might have fallen over.

Castiel brings his face close and lifts his hands to the wood, murmuring, "Let's take a look at you," under the sound of the animal's wild snarling.

There's venting cut into the front of the crate, through which he can see something crouched low against the floor. The animal lunges again, this time towards him, and razor-sharp claws dig harshly into the wood surrounding the slits.

Ah. A cat of some variety. "No one here with harm you, I promise," he says, as the animal gives a coughing roar. "You're safe. It's safe," he repeats, and this time when the animal leaps for him he moves his hand to lay over what little of the tawny, blood-speckled paw makes it through the gap.

There isn't any of the electric undercurrent of _possibilities_ that Castiel associates with shapeshifters, nor the sooty cling of spellcraft. It's simply a wild animal, one that's hurt, and terrified. "Shhh," Castiel whispers.

 _Safe,_ he thinks. Through that tiny bit of contact, he tries to impress the idea of the crate as _den/warm/cozy._ Of himself, _den/friend/good._ Of the sanctuary, _food/water/friend._ "You're safe here," he says again.

The cat's yowl trails off into a noise like a mewl, claws flexing slightly under Castiel's palm.

"It's a good place. Food and shelter."

There's a pause, as if it were considering this. Then, it makes the strangest sound, a weird warbling croon Castiel would more associate with its domestic cousins than a cat as large as this. It sounds, almost, likes it's trying to talk back to him. To ask him something.

"Safe. I promise," he says, and lets his hand drop.

After a moment the claws withdraw, but the cat doesn't settle back. Castiel watches, puzzled, as it maneuvers itself so that one vibrantly gold-green eye peers out at him through the venting.

"Oh. Hello," he says, surprised.

It repeats that questioning noise, this time more loudly, and blinks at him, pupil narrowing in the slanting fall sun.

"Jimmy?" It's the veterinarian, standing at the tailgate. "We good to go?"

"I... believe so," Castiel says slowly, frowning at that one visible eye. It's focused on his face, moving with him when he sways experimentally, and there's a disconcertingly intelligent cast to its gaze.

"We're going to move you now," he feels compelled to explain. "It may be a bit of a bumpy ride, but at the end you'll have a nice enclosure to yourself. And you'll be fed."

The cat stares at him for another long, uncomfortable moment before it gives a huff, and disappears into the shadows of the crate.

"Jimmy?"

"Yes, sorry," he says, and turns and scoots down the truck bed. The forklift is fired up and positioned, and Castiel watches, perplexed, as the crate stays still and silent as it's lifted and carried away to the quarantine cages.

* * *

What Castiel wants more than anything at this moment (besides world peace, an end to hunger and for the vending machines in the main building to start stocking Payday candy bars again) is to fall into the narrow twin bed in his trailer and sleep through the next twenty-four hours.

Instead, he opens his front door and finds Balthazar sitting at his tiny kitchen table.

"Cassie, finally!" the other angel says with a bright smile.

"Go away," Castiel groans, and shuffles towards his bedroom.

Balthazar trails after him, watching with obvious amusement as Castiel bumps into furniture and bounces off doorframes before finally finding the edge of the mattress and collapsing facedown onto it.

"Still doing the whole sleeping thing, then?"

"Hmph."

"It's not good for you, Cassie, invites all kinds of other nasty human habits. Like _eating_."

"Nnngh."

"Disgusting practice, eating," Balthazar says, flopping down next to Castiel's prone body. "All that mastication, fluids oozing everywhere. And don't even get me started on the excretion process."

"Balth'zar."

"Of course, if you stop to look at it, fucking is by _far_ —"

Castiel lifts his head out of the pillows and glares. " _Balthazar_. What do you want?"

The angel, ankles crossed and hands linked behind his head, shrugs expansively. "Are you going to the convocation?" he asks, addressing his question to the ceiling.

"Con—oh," Castiel says, remembering Uriel's phonecall. "Of course I'm going."

"Yes, well," and Balthazar shrugs again. "Some of us have better things to do."

"How is Bela?" Castiel asks, because mentioning Balthazar's charge is always a sure distraction and has the added benefit of reminding the other angel he'll shortly be needed elsewhere— if he isn't already. Uriel did offer Castiel a position as a guardian angel once, but he'd pleaded temperamental unsuitability.

Balthazar turns on his side, grinning at Castiel in the dim twilight. "She swindled this Austrian count out of two original Vermeers yesterday, I've never been so proud."

"You should be leading her in godly ways," Castiel says reprovingly, but Balthazar only laughs and reaches forward to ruffle careless fingers through Castiel's hair.

"She's happy, what more can I want?"

"Her eternal soul to return to Heaven?"

Balthazar snorts. "It'll get there, Cassie, she's not a mass murderer."

He lets his hand rest on Castiel's head, thumb brushing idly over his brow.

"Something's happening, Castiel," the other angel says, meditatively. "Something is changing."

Castiel looks at him, troubled. "What do you mean?"

Balthazar smiles, but it's thin and sharp as a blade. "Just be careful out here by yourself, yeah? Keep your eyes open."

"Balthazar—"

"Do you still have your sword?"

"I— think so," Castiel says. Although he hasn't tried to manifest it since before his wings failed. "Balthazar, you should tell Uriel or Hester if you think something is wrong."

"Told you, didn't I?" Balthazar says, giving his head one last pat. "You tell them, Cassie. Go bring the glad tidings."

In the next instant he's gone, leaving a nothing but a warm indentation and the scent of cologne on Castiel's sheets.

* * *

Castiel has a dream that night.

It's a rare occurrence that's getting depressingly more common, the further Castiel slips from grace—or, rather, the further Grace slips from him. He never used to dream. Now, he walks the halls of New Jerusalem, flies over the domes of the White City, runs his fingers over the dazzling purity of the Gates that stand at Heaven's entrance. They part under his fingers and he wakes, reaching out into the dark for something that has been lost to him, to all of them for hundreds upon thousands of years.

This dream is different.

_He's walking along the bottom of the ocean, looking up at the far-away silhouettes of whales as they pass overhead. The abyssal plains stretch out into the gloom in every direction, empty and desolate._

_He walks, and as he walks, he begins to sense that there is something in front of him, a thing of unimaginable vastness. The sunlight that glimmers at the surface far above hardly penetrates here, and Castiel's eyes strain to discern a shape, any sign of movement._

_He dreams, and walks. But he never comes close enough to truly see._


	2. Chapter 2

Castiel wakes in the morning feeling dissatisfied and not quite remembering why, another disturbing consequence of dreaming. He stumbles out of bed, turns on the trailer's small hot water heater, and, while that grumbles to life, makes himself a cup of coffee from instant powder and tepid water from the tap. A vile beverage, coffee, but one he's grown increasingly dependent on, and, grudgingly, to enjoy.

The chemical stimulant therein is also quite useful; in just a few minutes, he's alert enough to notice that a novelty mug has joined the single empty vase on his windowsill. It has several stately European buildings and _Willkommen in Wien!_ stamped across it in large red letters.

"Balthazar," Castiel sighs, and shoves it in the cabinet.

The sun has barely cleared the top of the mountains when he opens his front door, sky an opaque blue shell arching clear and unbroken over the sanctuary. It'll be a sunny day, rare for this time of year. Frost has appeared overnight, and underneath Castiel's boots the grass makes faint crunching noises as he walks along the paths through the park to the main buildings.

While its central directive is the care and keeping of the fifty-odd exotic land predators they have in permanent residence, Cold Creek has been focusing more actively on rehabilitation of native species in recent years. The new avian and small animal enclosures are close to the trailers, and Castiel detours slightly to check on the sleepy-eyed spotted owls and a group of orphaned pine martin pups that were brought in a few weeks ago. They've grown since the last him saw them, and race from their den to nip at his fingers, chittering brightly at his loud, exaggerated cries of "Ow, ow!"

This time of morning the education and outreach building is still mostly dark, but there's a light on in the staffroom window. He stamps his feet on the concrete stoop to get some of the icy mud off, before gripping the chilled metal handle (he's forgotten his gloves, _again,_ Lord in heaven) and darting quickly inside, the better to keep the heat in.

There's a small bescarfed and bemittened group already huddled around the table, overnight staffers preparing for the long drive back to civilization, daytime interns and volunteers trying to rally themselves for another day's worth of feeding schedules, enrichment programs, routine maintenance and, yes, dung removal. After stopping by the kitchenette to pour himself another cup of coffee, he joins them.

"Hey, Mr. Novak," Andy mumbles as Castiel slips into the seat next to him. He has his head pillowed on his arms and, Castiel notes, yesterday's clothes on.

One of the overnighters, dark circles ringing her eyes, points a finger at Castiel accusingly. " _You._ "

"Me," Castiel agrees cautiously, taking a sip and grimacing. Vile. "Yes?"

"Your puma is a fucking _menace,_ " she hisses, glaring bleary-eyed at him.

"My—? The cat that came in yesterday?" Castiel had honestly forgotten about the poor thing. "What did it do?"

"It escaped. _Twice,_ " she groans, letting her head fall to the tabletop with a thump. "I don't even know _how_ , it's wrapped three deep in bandages and has two legs in splints. _Splints_ , Jimmy."

"I'm sorry," he offers, and she waves it off.

"Damned thing's just too smart. The big cat team was up half the night getting him back in quarantine! We finally just slapped someone's bike lock on the door."

"My bike lock," Andy adds faintly. He slumps a little further forward in his seat, all but asleep at the table. "Wanna new one. You dun' pay me enough."

"They don't pay us anything," someone grumbles.

"Doc thinks it was a pet," one of the other volunteers offers. "I heard they found it in some suburb outside Seattle."

"I heard they found it at a murder scene," another says with sleepy relish. "Like, a really creepy one, too. There were, like, voodoo hexes and stuff on the walls. Dead animals and shit."

"Mystery solved," Castiel says. "It's so intelligent because it's a witch's familiar, Satan's contract with her on earth."

For a moment, there are only blank stares, but a few awkward seconds later the volunteers give a round of polite, truncated laughter. Inwardly, Castiel sighs.

He tries, he really does, but human humor is so _difficult_. How Uriel and Balthazar have so mastered it is beyond him.

* * *

The puma isn't a familiar. Castiel is fairly sure of that, but, because the Fates are spiteful, devious hags and he doesn't trust them, during his lunch break he buys a Snickers bar (an inferior candy in every way to the Paydays that _still_ haven't been restocked) and finds a reason to wander over to the quarantine building.

The quarantine pens, of which the sanctuary has twenty-four, are where very sick animals are housed as they recover from their illnesses and where new animals wait out a proscribed period before being introduced to the park at large, to limit disease vectors. Each pen is divided into two spaces: an indoor, concrete-floored 'den' and a small twelve-by-twelve patch of grass accessible through a hatch in the wall.

The hatch to the outdoor portion of the puma's pen is open, but the animal has curled itself into a tight ball of tawny fur and white plaster in a corner and doesn't so much as twitch as Castiel approaches the cage. Frowning at it, he unclips the progress chart from the bars and reads the veterinarian's comments, treatment plan and notes from the staff the night before.

It hasn't taken any food, although that's fairly common for animals stressed by injury and transport, and apart from those injuries (long vertical gashes and contusions, consistent with a fight with another animal of similar size), the cat is the picture of health. A bit larger and better-fed than would be expected in the average wild-caught _Puma concolor_ , which supports the theory that it was being kept as a pet, but everything within normal ranges.

Better still, Castiel did not in fact manage to miss the telltale signs of a witch's familiar in his cursory check the night before. As a group, witches tend to keep jealously, even murderously close guard of their possessions, but here's no demonic energy in the pens besides Meg's, and some residual from the last time he had Growly or any of the rest of Crowley's brood as patients.

He lowers the clipboard and the puma is _there_ , wet nose pressed between the bars an inch from Castiel's fingers, a decidedly starving glint in its eye. Castiel manages not to drop the notes or his half-eaten candy bar, but it's a near thing.

"You startled me," Castiel says, voice coming out a little high.

"Merrr," the puma comments, gazing up at him with obvious longing.

No, not at him. At his lunch.

Experimentally, Castiel waves the candy bar in front of the puma and the animal follows his every movement with hungry interest. "You want... this?"

"Rrrr!"

"Well, you can't have it," Castiel says, holding the Snickers bar protectively to his chest. "It has chocolate in it."

The cat licks its lips.

"No. The theobromine could kill you."

It whines plaintively, bringing up one massive, bandaged paw and hooking wickedly-sharp claws into the chain link on the outside of the bars.

"And because it's mine," Castiel says firmly. "When you can pay for one yourself, you can have it."

The cat gives a surly huff and sits back, staring at him in silent demand.

Castiel exhales glumly. "I'll be right back."

* * *

_The bottom of the ocean hasn't changed, nor has the looming shape in the distance become any clearer. If anything, it's become even less distinct, leaving him with only the impression of immensity._

_Silent, he trudges on, silt stirred by his footsteps swirling like fog around his ankles, trailing after him in the dark._

* * *

An adult male mountain lion can eat up to twenty pounds of meat in a sitting, but over the next few days, Castiel can't get the puma interested in even a quarter of that.

"We've tried venison, beef, turkey, and chicken," Meg says with open disgust, kneeling next to Castiel on the cold concrete floor. "Even rabbit, and that god-awful salmon you brought back. You're saying he wanted your candy bar, Jimmy?"

"It seemed like it," Castiel murmurs, watching the cat stare down at the bloody chunks of organ meat he'd just slid under the door. It leans forward hesitantly, giving the tray a single deep sniff before its ear pin back against its skull, and it looks up at them with a face as disgusted as any child's on encountering liver.

Castiel sighs and Meg laughs, laying her hand flat against the bars as the puma steps delicately around the offered food to butt its head against the wire. It never fails to amaze Castiel how few of the animals sense the aura that feels so twisted and thorn-like, brushing against his in these close quarters. But then again Meg, like all children of the Serpent, is very, very good at disguising what she is. Perhaps it shouldn't surprise him at all.

The fact that Castiel has managed to keep his own angelic nature a secret from _her_ is nothing short of amazing. It's also, he suspects, the only reason he yet lives. He'd once asked Meg why she'd chosen to become a wildlife rescuer, showing up as she did at Cold Creek with no relevant skills and no real goal. If he'd been hoping for a revelation of some grand demonic plan, he was sorely disappointed; she'd only shrugged and said, "All the roads lead here." He still has no idea what she meant.

The few demons that remain on this plane are just as trapped as the angels are, and after a few centuries of uneasy coexistence broken intermittently by globe-spanning wars that devastated the ranks of both, the two groups have come to an uneasy truce. It's based, from what little Castiel knows of Hester and Rachel's missions, on a system of mutual vague threats, empty posturing and obsessively close monitoring.

He has established his own sort of peace here, albeit with one of the involved parties none the wiser, and at times it resembles something close to a friendship. The dishonesty wears at him, though. At times he almost prefers the openly antagonistic, direst-need-only relationship he shares with Crowley.

"Well, he's pretty friendly now," Meg is saying, scratching as the cat rubs its body along the cage wall where her fingers rest. "Definitely somebody's pet kitty?"

"Most likely," Castiel agrees, and pulls the tray back out of the cage.

The sanctuary's 'kitchen', where they keep most of the meat that the various bears, wolves, big cats and birds consume hundreds of pounds of on a daily basis, has mostly emptied out when Castiel returns. Only the vendor that sells them frozen rodents is left from earlier, still loading the fridges with his grisly little products.

"No luck, huh?" the man says. "Now, me, I like a good steak as much as the next guy, but you gotta cook it first, y'know what I'm saying?"

Castiel sets the tray on the prep table and considers this. "Cook it," he muses aloud. "I see."

And so the setting sun finds Castiel in the parking lot, being talked through the ridiculously complicated mechanics of charring a slab of cow on the rusty charcoal grill the sanctuary uses for company barbeques in the summer.

"No, don't turn it yet," the rodent vendor advises, sitting in the open bay of his van with his woolen hat pulled low and his hands tucked up under his arms. "And stop poking it, all the juices will run out."

"How long does this take?" Castiel complains, thinking bitterly of the gloves back at his trailer that he's forgotten, _again_.

"Shut up, y'big baby, and put the lid back on!" the vendor barks, and, scowling, Castiel complies.

* * *

They have an audience by the time he walks back into quarantine, bearing a tray full of beef that has not only been cooked, it has been seared to the utmost juice-retaining perfection. Char marks lie at exact ninety-degree angles to each other, and the meat has been properly rested to let the moisture reabsorb. These steaks are, in fact, flawless.

"Drumroll, please," says Meg, who was supposed to be off duty two hours ago. One of the night staffers obliges her. The puma, who'd perked up as soon as Castiel appeared, paces excitedly at the bars.

" _Bon appétit_ ," Castiel says, and slides the tray forward.

The cat is pulling the tray out of his hands before it's even halfway under the bars, digging in with huge bites and loud smacking gulps, the crunch and crackle of bone loud where the puma chews indiscriminately. A round of clapping starts up from the volunteers, and the cat huffs at them before dragging the tray into the furthest corner of its cage.

"Oh, yeah, you got it," Meg says, grinning at the horrific way the puma proceeds to utterly destroy the meal Castiel spent just more than an hour preparing.

"Yes, well done, Jimmy," the attending veterinarian says cheerfully. "Pun very much intended."

The puma purrs like a diesel engine as it eats. And eats, and eats. Eventually most of the staff seem to realize that yes, they do have other duties besides standing around and gawking, and trickle off in small groups.

"You'd better stay to make sure he doesn't choke," Meg says, patting his shoulder before rising to her feet. "Night, Jimmy."

Castiel resists the urge to scrub at the place she touched, and nods instead. "Goodnight."

When the tray is clean and empty, only Castiel is still there, sitting crosslegged on the ground with his chin on his palm, watching the spectacle with a small smile. The puma runs its long pink tongue along the edges of the tray before flopping onto its bandaged side, still purring. It regards Castiel through eyes barely slit open, expression one of pure feline contentment.

"I'm glad you liked it," Castiel says, yawning behind a hand, then stretching his arms up to work some of the kinks out of his back. "But you're sorely mistaken if you think I'm going to do that for all your scheduled feedings."

* * *

Castiel ends up cooking the puma's meals every day for the next week before his rapidly escalating attempts to convince the animal that a little raw meat won't kill it finally succeed. By the time the puma finally breaks down and allows itself to nibble at a bit of raw pork brisket, Castiel is so emotionally involved in the process he calls Balthazar.

" _This is what finally motivates you to pick up the phone? A cougar, Castiel?"_

"I want to remind you," Castiel says waspishly, "of all the times I did you the courtesy of listening when the only thing you seemed able to talk about was how adorable your little Bela was, how clever, how truly deserving of a guardian angel as wonderful and cunning as yourself. For _decades_ , Balthazar."

On the other end of the line, Balthazar makes a sound of exasperation. " _Fine, fine, go on. Tell me all about how your ickle baby snookums is finally eating his big-boy food."_

"I've decided to call him Snickers," Castiel says with stiff dignity.

" _Oh good Lord, really?"_

* * *

And after all the cooking, care, feeding and frustration, the puma for all intents and purposes becomes solely Castiel's to care for.

It's not unusual, especially at a wildlife sanctuary like Cold Creek that houses so many highly intelligent (read dangerous) species. Once an animal and a caregiver develop a rapport, it's far easier on the beast, and for the sanctuary, if that person remains a steady presence in their captive life— however long that lasts.

This puma, obviously human-socialized and so disdainful of meat in its natural state, will likely never be able to return to the wild, and Castiel will be caring for it for a long time. At least until the convocation and his reassignment. He doesn't mind, although sometimes for the sake of something to talk about he pretends to.

"I am not a large cat specialist," he tells the puma one evening, pouring over résumés for a new crop of volunteers. He's spread the pages out over the concrete next to the cage, in hopes a large surface to work with will help him organize his thoughts more easily, and because he finds the company restful. "I have other duties. Such as finding interns who don't mind that eighty-five percent of their working hours will involve shoveling manure, which, as I'm sure you can imagine, is a difficult task."

The puma looks entirely unimpressed by this argument, and the remaining giblets on its tray. It paws at him and the candy bar in his lap through the cage.

"I told you, no. Chocolate isn't good for you."

"Merrowr!"

Castiel brandishes a pen at him. "And neither are those chicken nuggets I caught Meg sneaking you. Eat your offal. It's very nutritious."

The cat makes a low rasping noise that sounds disconcertingly like a chuckle and rolls onto its back, paws kicking lazily at the air.

He must fall asleep at some point, his back to the wall and the puma curled up against the wire where Castiel's leg just brushes the metal.

* * *

_Castiel peers uselessly through the murky ocean depths, trying to decide if the shape is getting closer, or moving further away from him._

_His shoes are full of sediment, his clothing colonized by starfish and coral. It's getting more and more difficult to bend his knees and swing his arms, like his joints are rusting in place, and the harder he struggles the more slowly he seems to move. Something is tugging at him, trying to pull him away from the looming shape, and Castiel finds himself slowing to a full stop, no matter how hard he kicks against it._

_There's— there's something attached to him, right at the collar of his coat. Castiel looks back, bemused, and sees a small, unassuming fishhook caught in the tan fabric._

_The line tied to it stretches up and away, towards the distant sunlight that dapples the surface of the water. As he watches, the slack goes out of it and he's being pulled away from the sea floor, up through brightening blue water, higher and higher and higher, until his head abruptly breaks the surface._

_As if his human lungs have only just realized they were starving for it, Castiel is suddenly gasping for air, coughing raggedly against the sting of saltwater in his throat as he's hauled up onto a platform of some kind._

_"Holy crap," someone says, and a face swims into view above his. "You okay, dude?"_

_"Hah?" Castiel pants, dizzy and breathless._

_"I said, are you okay?"_

_Castiel's vision starts to clear, and there's a man kneeling over him, a hand braced under his head, strong, callused fingers gripping his chin._

_"Hey," the man says suddenly, bringing his face closer. His eyes are an arresting gold-green, and something about that niggles at the back of Castiel's mind. "Hey, I know you."_

_"You do?" Castiel asks bemusedly._

_"Yeah. I mean..." The man stares down at him, brows furrowed, full lips slightly parted. He's beautiful, Castiel realizes belatedly, in a way he seldom notices humans can be._

_"I do know you," the man says. "You smell like," he inhales deeply, "Christmas, and cathedrals. You're— Cas. My Cas," he says, and a grin breaks wide and brilliant over his face._

_Castiel stares up at him, momentarily mesmerized. "I'm your—who?"_

_"My Cas," the man says, then coughs, ducking his head. His hands are so warm where they touch Castiel's skin. "Well, not— not_ my _Cas. That's a little... okay, a lot creepy. Obviously. But..." He trails off as Castiel struggles to push himself into a sitting position. "Cas?"_

_They're on a dock that stretches out into the middle of a lake, hemmed in on all sides by a thick evergreen forest. The sun throws a rippling golden pall over the water, the faint call of faraway birds and soft sigh of the wind the only sounds._

_"Cas?"_

_"Where...?" Castiel starts, looking back at the man._

_"I think... Dad brought us here once," he says, looking around. "Some lake in Minnesota. There was a rusalka haunting it, dragging local boys into the water and eating them."_

_Castiel shifts away from the edge of the dock and the man laughs, his arm an easy weight still braced across Castiel's back. "Don't worry, we killed it."_

_He's smiling at Castiel, so openly happy to see him, as if Castiel is a long-lost friend, someone he's been looking for. It's strange, but warming in a way Castiel's unfamiliar with, heat rising in his cheek as he looks away, eyes dropping to his sopping clothes and muddy shoes._

_"Hey, Cas," the man murmurs. "I need to tell you something."_

But if he does tell him, Castiel doesn't remember it.


	3. Chapter 3

The recommended quarantine time for new animals at Cold Creek is six weeks minimum, but all it takes is a poorly-timed flash flood at a sister sanctuary for the puma to be moved up the line for a new home. The new enclosure previously belonged to a grizzly bear (recently reintroduced to the wilds of the Canadian Rockies) and it's three times the size of the cat's current space, with any number of interesting rocks and logs and a beautiful gnarled oak growing up through the center Castiel knows the cat will love.

First, though. First he has to convince it to get back in the transport crate.

"Definitely raised a pet," Meg whispers. They watch the puma, crouched as if it were stalking wild deer, inch forward towards the McDonald's cheeseburger (stripped of onions, ketchup, pickle and anything else noxious to the feline digestive system) in Castiel's hand, held at the barely-cracked opposite door of the crate.

"Quiet," he tells her, and wiggles the burger enticingly. "Here, boy. Here, Snickers."

The puma yanks itself back from the crate with a vicious snarl, and after a startled pause the big cat staff break off into muffled peals of laughter.

"I think Snickers is a no-go, Mr. Novak," Andy says helpfully, and Castiel curses as he realizes that, once again, he'll have to do everything the hard way.

* * *

They do get the puma in the crate, eventually, with several more cheeseburgers sacrificed for the good of the cause (followed by lectures from every member of their veterinary staff on obesity and the dangers of feeding carnivores too many complex carbohydrates). Castiel keeps up a constant stream of nonsense noise, waxing rhapsodic about the many charms of Not-Snickers' new enclosure, and finally, the puma saunters into the crate as if it had intended to do so all along.

And refuses to get out again.

"What's the matter now?" Castiel asks beseechingly, crouching in the chilly mud next to the crate. "Look! Fresh air! Sunshine!"

"Well, I'm done," Meg announces, standing wiping her forehead with the back of her hand. "Give me a yell when he makes up his freaking mind."

There's general consensus from the other volunteers and they move off, leaving Castiel alone with what must be the most infuriatingly stubborn wild animal he's ever encountered.

He sighs hugely and slides down the side of crate, letting his head fall back to knock against the chipwood paneling. He hears the puma shift, snuffling at his hair through the crate vents, and he looks up at the overcast sky with a rueful smile.

"Whenever you're ready, then," he says, and closes his eyes.

* * *

_"I'm dreaming, right?" the man says quietly, as if he's talking to himself. He gazes out towards the far shore._

_"Dreaming?" Castiel asks. Yes, this must be another dream. Although Castiel's never had dreams so lucid._

_"Things get a little confused," the man continues, setting aside the fishing rod in his hand. The rod, Castiel notes, that's still hooked onto the collar of Castiel's coat. "It's... it's like I'm half-asleep all the time. It's hard to tell what's real. Hell, the first few days I was sure it was_ all _a dream. I barely remembered where I was, who I was."_

_"And... who are you?" Castiel feels compelled to ask, and the man looks back at him, a surprised arch to his brows._

_"It's_ me _, Cas," he says. "My name is—"_

* * *

"What did you call him?"

The visitor starts, then looks around guiltily as the other tourists turn to see who Castiel is addressing. "Uh, what?"

"What did you just call him?" Castiel asks again, a little louder, and the visitor pulls his hands away from the chain link and rises from where he'd been kneeling next to the enclosure fence. On the other side of it, the puma yowls and rears onto its back legs, trying to fit its paws through the gaps in the metal to get at him.

"I, ah. Called him Dean?" the young man says, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. He's a head taller than most of the other guests, his souvenir Cold Creek sweatshirt a size too small and stretched tight over his broad chest. The female staffers have been making eyes at him all morning.

"Dean," Castiel repeats.

"Like... James Dean?" the man says awkwardly.

"... I see," Castiel says, although he really doesn't. "Please refrain from direct contact with the animals. The sanctuary isn't liable for any injuries received if you don't follow proper safety procedure."

"Sure, no problem. Sorry," the visitor says quickly, stuffing his hands into his pockets. The puma drops back to all fours and throughout the next part of Castiel's informational speech it paces, restless and agitated. The young man doesn't look back at it, for all appearances listening intently to Castiel's descriptions of mountain lion behavior in the wild, but the puma doesn't once take its eyes off him.

When the group moves on, it follows alongside them until it can't go any further, and Castiel watches it watch them until the enclosure disappears around a corner.

* * *

" _James Dean was a film star, Castiel. Have you been living under a rock the past few decades?"_

"These endless insults are why I so treasure our friendship, Balthazar," Castiel responds dryly. He's cooking himself dinner in his perfunctory little kitchen, standing at the sink as the water drains out of the pasta he's just boiled.

_"Thank you, darling, I do try. And also, do you realize this is the second call time you've called me in as many weeks?"_

"I am unfortunately aware," he sighs, shaking the colander.

 _"I'd like to get excited, but they've both been about a bloody cougar."_ A pause. _"Is it too much to hope that's a euphemism and you've actually found yourself a woman?"_

Castiel rolls his eyes and sets the pasta on the counter, turning to the stove and the reheated bottle of spaghetti sauce on the burner. "Balthazar, I'm hanging up now."

_"I was only ask—"_

* * *

It's a strange coincidence, certainly.

Castiel sits with his knees drawn up to his chin, head resting on his arms, and watches the puma bolt its evening meal. The new volunteers have all gone, the night staff are in the south pens monitoring a young Asiatic black bear's first birth, and Castiel is technically off-duty. It's just them in this corner of the sanctuary, the enclosure lit by a single yellowed halogen light.

The cat is licking the bottom of the bloody tray, and Castiel tries "Dean?" experimentally.

The cat looks up at him, ears pricked forward.

"Dean," he says again, and it licks its chops and trots up to the fence, rubbing a muzzle stained red against Castiel's palm when he lays it against the mesh.

* * *

_"Cas!" the man with the fishing rod greets him, looking back over his shoulder with a broad smile._

_"Dean," Cas says cautiously, and Dean gives him a thumbs up and motions him forward— away from the dock, up onto the grassy bank where a long black car waits, sleek and leonine. Two bottles of beer sit side by side on the roof._

_"Y'know, I thought I was dead the first time I came here," Dean says, plucking one from the top of the car and settling a hip against the driver's-side door._

_At the comment Castiel laughs, and Dean says, "What, you don't think this could be Heaven?"_

_"I've been to Heaven," Castiel says. He walks up off the rough planks and onto the rocky ground. He hesistantly leans against the hood, then sits, letting his legs swing through empty space. He takes the beer Dean gives him. "It's not nearly as... pleasant." The earthly spheres have a kind of ephemeral loveliness that is brief and all too fragile, compared to the eternal, sepulchral magnificence of Heaven._

_"Seriously?" Dean says. He knocks his shoulder against Castiel's, companionably. "Hey, tell me, is God as big a dick in person?"_

_It's startlingly easy to lean into Dean, as if they were friends. As if they were more._

_"I don't know," Castiel says. "I've never seen Him."_

* * *

Castiel may, like Azrael and Nehandriel before him, have finally been driven mad by the banalities of human existence.

He doesn't tell anyone about Dean, or the other Dean. If there's a connection, he decides, it's purely in his head. With his mind now housed in the organic workings of a frail human brain and neurostructure, he should probably be grateful something like this hasn't happened sooner.

The label on the puma's cage reads SNICKERS – PUMA CONCOLOR, M20120915, as do all his records and files. But when the last of the stitches come out, the note Castiel makes in his calendar is _Dean – end treatment_ , and when he calls Balthazar, it's that name he uses.

"I think Dean's lonely," he frets into the phone, late in October. "Understimulated, at least. He's been pacing so much—"

" _Is this about that goddamn cat again, Castiel?"_

"Balthazar—"

" _I'm hanging up now."_

"Baltha—!"

* * *

A few days later, Castiel receives a package covered with impenetrably foreign postage (Malaysian, he thinks. Possibly Thai) and inside finds close to a hundred catnip toys, small pink mice with gossamer ribbons and tiny bells stitched to their sides. The note inside says, _For your sweetums._

Castiel would be more annoyed, but the puma _loves_ them. With Andy's patient step-by-step instructions, he manages to send Balthazar a picture of the puma rolling in a pile of the fluffy pink toys, pupils blown to the size of quarters.

The text he gets back seems strangely non sequitor.

/are you still going to the convocation, then?/

Frowning, Castiel carefully pecks out, /Yes. Why?/

Balthazar doesn't respond.

* * *

"So, Mr. Samuel... Hagar," Castiel says, looking down at the application to make sure he has the correct name. "According to this, you've loved animals since you were a child, have hopes of opening your own wildlife refuge one day, and just finished a graduate degree in large animal husbandry at South Dakota State." He looks up. "Congratulations."

"Thanks, Mr. Novak," the man says. "I just go by Sam, if you'd like."

"Alright, then. Sam." Castiel studies him, the upright line of his back, hands folded neatly in front of him, eyes direct and all but dripping earnestness. "You came through with a tour last week," he realizes out loud.

"Um, yes," Sam says shamefacedly, hand going to the back of his neck in a gesture Castiel remembers well. "Sorry again for upsetting your mountain lion."

"Snickers can be a bit fractious," Castiel allows, and Sam's eyes go wide.

" _Snickers?"_ he asks, voice strained.

Castiel gives him a blandly inquiring look, and Sam bites his lip. Strangely, it looks like he's trying not to laugh.

"It's just… I, ah, was expecting something a little more… fierce?"

"I see," Castiel says, although he really doesn't. "Why don't you tell me a little more about your work experience, Mr. Hagar?"

* * *

_They're in the car, now, rolling down a highway that's nothing but a black ribbon against dull grey grass and an overexposed sky._

_"Don't get me wrong, Cas, it's nice that you try," Dean says, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. "But seriously, dude. Those catnip mice? They're great, thanks, but afterwards I just want to punch you in the face. Don't think I didn't see you take that picture."_

_Castiel smiles at him from the passenger's seat, not really understanding why Dean would care about other-Dean's toys but happy anyway. Happy, because Dean is here and it feels like there's something smoldering in his chest, a half-lit coal waiting for the right wind to blow it into flames._

" _And nice going with the Snickers thing," Dean grumbles. "Sam is_ never _going to let that one go. You don't know him yet, but trust me, he can be such a little asshole—"_

_Castiel stares at him for a moment."Do you... know Mr. Hagar?"_

_"Sam_ Hagar? _That little creep," Dean says, but his derision sounds somehow fond, familiar. "And_ yes _, I know Sam. Haven't you been listening to anything I talk about?"_

_Azrael believed spoons were the ultimate expression of divine love and hoarded them in the billions, Castiel reminds himself. Nehandriel claimed the Leviathan were hiding in the Aral Sea and drained the entire basin. Hallucinating one man isn't so bad, compared to that._

_Dean's looking at him like he expects an answer, and Castiel fumbles out "I— shouldn't hire him, then?"_

" _What?" Dean looks away, back at the road. "No, no. Kid's smart. He'll do good work."_

_Castiel makes a thoughtful noise and the ouroboros winds away, a black river snaking under their wheels._

* * *

"Hey, Jimmy?"

"Mmm?" He looks up from his lunch, a cup of instant ramen.

Meg's leaning up against the staff kitchenette counter, looking over at the group of new volunteers filing out their paperwork at the table across the room.

"Who's the big guy?"

There's no question as to who she means. Sam makes their humble plastic chairs look like children's furniture, even hunched in on himself to make more room for other people at the table.

"Ah. Mr. Hagar. He had an excellent resume." Castiel doesn't add that it was his references that made the deal.

"Mmhm," Meg says distractedly. There's something in the demon's eyes, an intense interest that Castiel is immediately wary of.

He watches her closely under the pretext of finishing his noodles, but all she does is stand there and smile behind her hand: a small, malevolent thing that makes her eyes gleam briefly black where they're fixed on Sam's bowed shoulders.

* * *

_The wallpaper in this motel room is reminiscent of pea soup and overcooked cabbage, and the color of the carpet is frankly even more horrendous. Cas opens his mouth to say so, and—_

_"Oh," he says instead. "Oh, what—?"_

_His breath hitches as Dean's mouth moves on him, sliding slow and sure over the trembling muscles of his bare stomach. His lips, his tongue— so hot, like a brand, slick and wet where they—_

"Dean. _.."_

_"Like that?" the man murmurs into the cut of his hip, hands braced under Castiel's thighs to spread them wide. Thumbs stroke into the hollows his bones make under his skin, and Dean sucks lazily at the crease between leg and groin, Castiel's hips coming right up off the bed. "Dean— what—" he moans._

" _Shhh," Dean laughs, firms his hold and turns his head—_

—and Castiel wakes with his hands twisted in the sheets instead of Dean's hair, panting up at the ceiling.

* * *

Castiel has never quite mastered the art of self-satisfaction, and as a result he's in an unbelievably foul mood for the rest of the day.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Castiel says to the crowd before him. "Do you have any idea why I've called you here this afternoon?"

There are glances of confusion among them, uncomfortable murmurs and shifting like sheep before the sheepdog. Sam is conspicuous in the back row, a giant compared to their mostly-female, mostly-veterinary-student new volunteer group. In the enclosure next to them, Dean sits at the bars with his long tail wrapped neatly around his feet, grooming a paw with a distinct air of deep satisfaction.

"I called you here," Castiel says with deadly intensity, "because for the past few days I've been finding _these_ in Snickers' cage _."_

He brandishes a crumpled aluminum dish, licked completely clean but for a few smears of apple-cinnamon filling along the bottom.

"Do you know what this is?" he asks tightly.

"Um," one of the girls says. "It's a... it's a pie plate?"

"Yes," Castiel says. "It is a _pie plate_. Would anyone care to explain to me why they felt it necessary to give this puma, an _obligate_ albeit opportunistic carnivore, several pounds carbs, sugar and _fruit_?"

On the other side of the fence, Dean lets out a sharp yowl and nervous giggles break out amongst the volunteers. Castiel glares at the cat and Dean looks right back at him, smacking his lips.

"Volunteers, please." Castiel holds up the tin again. "Big cats do not eat apple pie," he says with narrow eyes. "There will therefore be _no more apple pie_. Do we understand each other?"

Various permutations of "Yes, sir," issue from the crowd, and more laughter.

"Good. You may go," Castiel says, and on the other side of the fence Dean stretches out his paw to try and knock the pie plate out of Castiel's hand.

"Bad cat," Castiel scolds, and Dean snorts at him.

* * *

" _You do_ not _get between a man and his pie, Cas," Dean says, shoving Castiel back into the headboard and kneels above him to shrug out of his jacket, yank off his shirt._

_Castiel twists his fingers into the belt loops on Dean's jeans and tugs impatiently, and Dean comes willingly, with a smile that's sweet and devious at the same time. It tastes sweet, too, under the clumsy, unpracticed push of Castiel's tongue— a little like apples, and spices._

" _I do not want to hear about the pie," Castiel growls into Dean's mouth, winding his arms around the man's neck so he can pull him down, pull him closer."I want sex."_

" _Mmm, I have absolutely no problem with that," Dean purrs, and they topple backwards onto the mattress._


	4. Chapter 4

Fall is a slow season at the sanctuary, and Castiel spends most of his free time with Dean. It's hard to tear himself away, sometimes; he knows the animal can't really respond with a human level of affection, but the cat is always seems so pleased to see him. It's been such a long time since anyone ( _real_ ) was.

One evening, when Castiel finally drags himself home, there's a message on his answering machine.

" _Hello, brother! This is Inias, and I am calling you on the telephone. Hester assures me that if I speak loudly and clearly into this device, you will hear my voice and answer me, but a young lady has just informed me you are currently unavailable for conversation. Please use the telephone to return this 'call' I have sent, as I wish to speak with you on the topic of the upcoming concordance. Thank you. Goodbye."_

"You did very well," Castiel assures him, returning the call after he's eaten and, to use Balthazar's charming terms, attended to the processes of excretion. "I've never received so clear and coherent a message."

" _I'm so glad,"_ the other angel gushes. _"I seldom use human technology, even now that I live among them._ " Inias, as Castiel remembers, is currently assigned to tend the sick and wounded of the Sudan.

 _"Now, to our topic. Castiel, you must give me your honest opinion,_ " Inias says, voice quieting. _"I do not wish to attend the convocation."_

"What? Why?" Castiel asks, taken aback. Balthazar's defection is understandable, given his temperament and the creeping cynicism he's developed over the years, but Inias' filial piety has been a constant force in their garrison's long separation from Heaven.

 _"I do not wish to leave here,"_ Inias confesses. _"Uriel will send me away, when I feel as though I am finally where I belong."_

"Inias," Castiel breaths.

_"Brother… brother. I have fallen in love."_

"Oh, Inias," Castiel says softly, letting his head fall.

_"Nothing will move me from her side. Will you tell him this? Please, will you tell him?"_

And Castiel can only answer that he will, of course he will.

* * *

_"I was married once," Castiel tells Dean, head on the man's shoulder._

_These nights seem to last for years, just the two of them together, while the landscape around them changes. Sometimes they're here, on the lake, where the sun sets in perpetuity and the water glitters gently under its rays. Sometimes they're in the car, or the motel, at the edge of the Grand Canyon, or some nameless truckstop in the Midwest. Sometimes they talk. Sometimes they don't._

_Castiel might be going crazy, but he finds that he doesn't really care, as long as Dean is there._

_"Whoa, married? Really?" Dean says, angling his head awkwardly to look down at him. "I never pegged you as the type, Cas."_

_"We separated after only six years," Castiel admits, turning his face into Dean's neck, breathing in the smell of warm skin and leather._

_Dean shifts so they're leaning on each other, his cheek on Castiel's temple. "You fall out of love, or something?"_

_"I told her who I was," Castiel says. "What I was. I couldn't bear to be dishonest with her any longer."_

_"She didn't take it well, I guess."_

_"It challenged many of her beliefs. In the end I believe it was easier for her to assume I was insane, rather than change the way she viewed the world." He stares at the ripples in the cool green water below, and wonders if he's imagining the shadow that moves under them._

_Dean's arm is around him and his hand is on his shoulder, the heat of his fingers bleeding through the coat. "Hey, Cas. Anyone who bails on you just because of a little crazy didn't deserve you in the first place."_

_"It was... painful, to see her distance herself. To see her decide not to trust me."_

_Dean doesn't say anything for a moment, and Castiel looks up at him, freckled nose and gleaming green eyes in the soft evening sunlight. "This makes you uncomfortable."_

_Dean gives him a wry half-smile. "Not uncomfortable, really. Just bringing back some bad memories of my own."_

_"I'm sorry."_

_"Don't be, dude." He's quiet for a moment, taking another sip of beer before saying, "I understand. You don't just give up on somebody like that."_

* * *

The puma has been living in the old grizzly pen for just over three weeks when Castiel notices the tracks.

It's only luck he sees them at all, coming by unusually early in morning. The frost is retreating fast under the dawn's assault and it leaves the edges of the footprints soft and amorphous. But they are, unmistakably, footprints, and they lead up to the puma's cage door, parade up and down the length of the tall outside fence, and finally retreat back in the direction of the road that runs through the forest preserve.

More worrying, though, is that the puma's tracks follow them, up and down, step for step.

* * *

The tracks are there the next morning, too.

* * *

"Interesting," Meg says, when it's clear she means anything but. She's playing with tarot cards, laying them out on the staffroom table in wide branching patterns only she understands. Castiel sits beside her, unwrapping the sandwich he's brought for lunch.

"You are, ostensibly, one of the big cat keepers," he says, taking a bite. Honey and peanut butter stick to the roof of his mouth, make his next words come out thick and slurred. "This should concern you."

She purses her lips, lays out another card—the Magician, upright. "Sorry to break it to you, man, but that cougar of yours isn't a big cat. Big cats belong exclusively to the genus _Panthera_ , and anything else I don't have to give a shit about."

"I caught him digging at the base of the fence the other day. That's not normal for cats, is it?"

She shrugs, lays the Knight of Wands next to the Magician. "They'll try anything if they're determined to get out. The Siberian tigers, Kisa and Styopa? Go through a fence a month apiece. Little bastards," she adds fondly.

"I'm concerned about him," he admits to his sandwich, playing with the edge of Ziploc bag he'd packed it in. "He trusts humans too much. What if it's a poacher?"

Meg pins him with an unimpressed stare. "What if it's a random crazy who masturbates to mountain lions? Think about it, Jimmy. These enclosures are double-fenced, steel-reinforced and locked up like Fort Knox. There's no way anyone's getting in, and what poacher would shoot an animal he can't get at to take away?"

"I suppose that's true," he allows, and Meg snorts.

"Don't worry, your pretty kitty probably has a secret admirer from one of the school groups that came through last week. It'll get colder and they'll get sick of it soon enough."

* * *

_Dean's sleeping while asleep, which should be impossible, Castiel thinks, combing his fingers through the short bristle of the man's hair. Sunlight slants across the motel sheets, turning the short strands gold and bronze._

_Or perhaps Dean's not asleep at all, because the caress makes him sigh, a soft smile crooking his lips and Castiel can't resist tracing the small lines that bracket that mouth, those eyes, fingers slow and uncertain in the wake of a sudden surge of nameless emotion._

_Dean is beautiful, Castiel thinks again, hazily._

_"Cas," the man murmurs against Castiel's fingertips, a hint of a laugh coloring his voice. "Tickles."_

_So very beautiful._

* * *

Meg has the annoying habit of nearly always being right, but Castiel has no patience for her laissez-faire tactics. The day after their discussion, Castiel gets up in the somehow more profound darkness just before dawn, grabs a cattle prod from the staff storeroom, and goes to see exactly who is visiting his Dean at so early an hour.

Of course, the mysterious visitor doesn't show that morning, or the day after that. On the third day, Castiel's alarm clock fails and when he reaches the enclosure there are tool marks on the lock into the cage, small chunks taken out of the bars where someone's tried to worry them open. On the ground, a half-empty pie tin lies crumpled, and the puma's still licking his chops as he trots up to the wire.

Castiel curses Meg, Crowley, Asmodeus, Mammon and all the princes of hell, glaring at Dean when he rears up to greet him with ecstatic purring.

"The next time someone tries to break into your enclosure you need to eat _them_ , not their pie," Castiel snaps, which earns him a throaty "Rrowwr!"

There's frost but the ground has frozen solid, and what little indication there is of footprints is fading quickly. Castiel traces the faint tracks as they grow fainter, through the enclosures to the wide weedy field that marks the boundary between the sanctuary and the Mount Spokane preserve. They cross within feet of his trailer.

He loses the trail there, where clover and grass become roots and leaf litter, and stares angrily into the dormant forest, breath fogging in the freezing air.

In summer, he never would have seen it. But it's late autumn now and the trees have been left stripped and bare, and there, fifty feet into the tree line, Castiel can see the vague outline of something long and black.

It's a car, an older model. _(Dean's car, it looks like Dean's car, what—?)_ There's a path through the underbrush from where it was driven off the main road to this little clearing, and signs that someone has been using it as the base of a campsite. Castiel marches past a fire pit ringed by rocks and full of ash, and kicks spitefully at some of the stones as he comes up to the driver's side door.

He pounds on the roof with a fist and shouts, "Come out with your hands up!" Mostly because he's always secretly wanted to, and because wielding the crackling cattle prod makes him feel strangely empowered.

There's no response, no movement behind the frost coating the windows, and Castiel is raising his hand to bang again when someone says, "Um," from behind him, and Castiel spins to face them.

Sam has a sheepish expression and an armful of firewood. "Hi, Mr. Novak."

"You?"

"Me," the volunteer admits. "Can you put that thing down?"

Castiel raises the cattle prod between them. "No."

Sam lets the firewood drop, revealing the gun in his right hand. "Please?" he asks again. He looks extremely apologetic about having to insist.

Castiel can't fly, but that doesn't mean he's completely defenseless. The angel slips slightly sideways through time and jabs the prod right between the young man's shoulder blades, nodding with satisfaction as Sam gurgles and falls to the forest floor, spasms shaking his big body.

"I'm calling the police," Castiel decides, picking up the gun.

"Wait!" Sam manages. "Wait, please wait, m'sorry. I c'n explain."

"I very much doubt that," Castiel says, grabbing him by his jacket collar and dragging him back towards the sanctuary.

"Really!" Sam yelps, trying and failing to gain any kind of purchase on the frozen ground. "I swear!"

* * *

"So. Sam Hagar," Castiel says, after he finds the application again. "Is that your real name?"

"Not so much," Sam says. "Mr. Novak, is all this duct tape really necessary?"

Castiel ignores him, flipping through the next few pages. "You really are everything we look for in our applicants. It's almost too good to be true."

Sam shifts as much as he's able to, with most of a roll of shiny grey tape affixing him to one of Castiel's kitchen chairs, not quite meeting Castiel's eyes.

"Sam?"

Sam bites his lip. "It's, uh, no. It's all made up."

Castiel sets the résumé aside and stares at him over folded hands, and Sam sighs.

"Look. De— _Snickers_ , is... he's like a brother to me," he says. "I love him. We grew up together."

"Snickers is a _wild animal_ ," Castiel reminds him, although relief is spreading through him. Not a poacher, then.

"He's not happy here," Sam pleads. "You've got to see how much he hates that cage!"

"The state of Washington does not allow the keeping or breeding of wild animals by private owners," Castiel points out. "You've been keeping him illegally, which means secretly, and certainly means a cage much smaller than ours."

"You—it's wasn't like that," Sam says. "He's not... usually..." He sighs. "Okay. This is going to sound completely crazy, I know, but Dean is in _danger_. He's—"

There's a perfunctory knock at Castiel's door and then it swings open, Meg calling out, "Yo, Jimmy, hope you realize it's ten am and you missed—"

Castiel expects the surprise, the double-take. What he doesn't expect is the slow, sultry grin that follows. "Well, isn't this interesting," she purrs.

Her eyes have come over black as tar, and Sam stiffens where he's taped upright.

"Interesting, interesting. Now, _what_ did Sam Winchester do to deserve being taped to your chair, Jimmy?" she asks with a laugh as she saunters closer. There's a knife, suddenly, flicking out from her fingers like a snake's tongue and trailing over the bob of Sam's throat as he swallows.

"What are you doing, Meg?" Castiel asks, fairly calmly he thinks.

"Eh, whatever. I don't think this concerns you anymore," she says, just as Sam repeats " _Meg?"_ in a strangled voice, staring at her like he's seen a ghost. They know each other. _How_ do they know each other?

"Meg, what—" Castiel tries again, reaching to grab her wrist. With a careless sweep of her arm she's knocks him sideways into the opposite wall, and Castiel just lies there for a moment, stunned by the impact.

"Mr. Novak!" Sam calls, but Meg is straddling him where he's taped immobile to the chair, and she brings the knife in close, scraping at the outer edge of his eye socket.

"I've been watching you, Sammy," she says coyly. "I've been waiting for you to do your thing and move on. But you're still here, why? And where oh where," a thin red thin appears just above his cheekbone, "is big bad brother Dean?"

What?

"What do you want with Dean?" Castiel pants, using the wall to push himself up.

Meg looks back at him, head cocked. "What do _you_ know about Dean, Jimmy?" she asks curiously, and behind her Sam widens his eyes and shakes his head slightly.

"Dean, he," Castiel says, stalling for time as he climbs to his feet. He's trying to think of how he can get her away from Sam, get her alone. "He's tall, he has— a leather jacket," _and freckles, and eyes the color of summer grass and peridot_. "I've seen him around," Castiel says with perfect honesty.

Of course, he's thinking of _his_ Dean, the one who lays his head in Castiel's lap and smiles and calls him Cas, always Cas, but Meg doesn't know that.

"Okay, little vague, but 'leather jacket' does just scream Winchester," Meg says dryly.

"I've seen him hanging around a car in the woods," Castiel temporizes, remembering Sam's campsite. "It's… old, and black."

"The Impala," Meg says, clapping her hands together. "Oh, goody."

She climbs off Sam's lap and beckons Castiel forward with the knife. "Field trip. Let's go check out that car, Jimmy."

Sam is staring at Castiel with a mixture of confusion and betrayal, and when Meg turns to go for the door Castiel tries to convey with his expression that he's buying Sam time, leading the demon with the knife away so Sam can escape.

"On second thought," Meg says, spinning around. "Jimbo, cut Sammy-boy loose. It's better to never leave a Winchester to his own devices."

Or not.


	5. Chapter 5

"What will you do when we find Dean?" Castiel asks, retracing his steps from that morning. He walks at the front of their little group, very aware of Sam's gun in his coat pocket and also aware of just how little a normal bullet would do to a demon. Meg and Sam walk behind him, her pose flirtatious until you looked closer and saw the friendly arm around him hid a knife pressed into the tendons of his neck.

"Haven't decided yet," Meg says gaily. She sounds incredibly pleased with herself, even giddy. "Probably some fun variation of the usual: death, dismemberment. Disposal. The three Big Ds of mob murders everywhere."

"Is that what this is about? Mob trouble?" Castiel asks, and doesn't have to work to sound confused. Meg talks about Dean as if he were a _person_. Is it possible there are there two? Sam said Dean was in danger, and this must be what he was talking about, but how did Sam's brother Dean and Sam's _pet_ Dean become intertwined?

Castiel is leading them to the car, but he's doing it as slowly as he can, trying to work out how he can get Sam away from Meg long enough to try to exorcise her. Killing her outright is probably beyond what pitiful dregs of Grace he still possesses, but if he could just get the two of them separated...

The smell of sulfur drifts by Castiel's nose, followed, chillingly, by the smell of wet dog.

Hellhounds.

As soon as he thinks it he sees them everywhere, shades and shadows sliding over the forest floor with nothing to cast them, invisible bodies brushing aside dead branches and thick bushes. At least ten of them are keeping pace with them as Castiel guides them through the thickly wooded preserve.

This... this may be something he can work with.

As he walks, Castiel brings a hand up as if to steady himself, and wiggles his fingers enticingly. "Here, boy," he murmurs, as quietly as he can.

Nothing. Just the cold damp air of late autumn. He bites his lip, hard, and does it again."Here!" _Father, please,_ he thinks.

A large unseen tongue licks him, a head butting up under his palm, and Castiel lets out a quiet, shuddering breath of relief.

"Growly?" he whispers, and is nearly knocked over by the force of the dog's excited headbutt.

The thing about hellhounds is that they belong to hell entire, and are seldom loyal one demonic master over others.

Meg laughs at him. "Sorry, some of my babies are a little frisky."

The other thing about hellhounds is that once they do choose that master, their devotion is all-encompassing.

"Oh, fuck," whispers Sam, who seems to just have realized he's surrounded.

"That's right, Thing Two," Meg says with nasty satisfaction. "Hellhounds, just for you and Dean-o. You aren't getting away from me again."

While she gloats, Castiel's hand surreptitiously finds the massive hound's head again. "Growly," he breathes. "I need you to do something very important."

The beast's rumbling growl is more felt than heard.

"Can you find Daddy? Can you get Daddy for me, Growly?"

The hellhound is off with a joyous bark that sounds like funeral bells, and the rest of the hounds mill around them in confusion, their keening howls all the more terrifying for their silence earlier. Meg brings Sam up short.

"What did you do? Where is it going?" she says, furious, and Castiel tries for fear and bewilderment. He doesn't have to work very hard.

"What? What's going on? What was—?"

"Oh, shut up," she snaps. "You're positive this is the right way?"

"Yes," Castiel says, mouth going dry at her tone. "Why?"

"Because my babies don't think so. They can't smell Dean anywhere," she says, and Castiel's hit by something he only sees the shadowy edges of, throat closing on the overpowering reek of sulfur. As he falls he knocks against Meg's legs, and she kicks him onto his back.

"Fuck, _fuck_ ," Sam curses, cringing away from the invisible pack, and then Meg is crouching down and there's a tug at Castiel's coat pocket.

Castiel scrambles away but Meg has the pistol in her hands, turning it this way and that before looking up with an expression of sad disappointment. "Oh, Jimmy, what do we have here?"

"Wait," Castiel says, hands coming up in front of him as she aims straight at his heart. "Wait, I didn't—"

"You got one chance, and you blew it."

"Please, I—"

"Too bad, so sad, Jimmy-boy," Meg says, and shoots.

* * *

_It's dark, here at the bottom of the ocean. It's cold, too, with no sunlight to warm it._

_The coral has grown too strong to pull against, and Castiel is fixed in place like an anchor, watching the whales swim overhead._

"Cas, please."

_That vague, vast shape Castiel has been walking towards is now coming to him of its own accord, rising up from the black depths like the Leviathans of old._

"Cas!"

_There's no escaping it, and the gloomy twilight of the broad oceanic plain dims in Castiel's eyes._

"Damn it, Cas!"

_Except—_

—summer grass and peridot—

— _not yet— please, Father—_

"Cas, you moron," Dean laughs, pulling the angel's face down to his.

_Not yet—_

_Not—_

* * *

This isn't a dream, but it feels like one.

_He sits with Anna on her porch in Georgia, and he remembers this, remembers the achingly sweet sticky taste of fresh peaches and the shock of feeling something kick against his palm when he rests it gingerly over her thin cotton sundress._

" _I think she likes you," Anael says, lips touched with a small, tender smile._

" _Sister, have you heard—?"_

_"I have. I'm not going, Castiel, ever again," she says, bringing her hand to rest over his on the broad moon-curve of her stomach._

_"Never?"_

_"I don't need it anymore," she says, simply._

_He feels strangely hurt by this. "We're your family. You don't need us?"_

_"I listen to the silence of our Father," she says softly, lifting one hand to cup his cheek. "And I think I'm ready for the next part, Castiel. I'm ready to move on."_

* * *

_Not yet—_

_not_

 

_yet_

* * *

_There's a door._

_There's a door, and not much else, a soft creeping mass of lightdark that refuses to be pierced by the eye. But there is a door._

_Castiel knocks._

_"Come in," someone calls from the other side. Castiel puts a hand on the worn brass knob, turns it, and it sighs open._

_In the room beyond, there are three men sitting around a low felted table, cards in their hands and chips piled high in front of them. One looks up, an expression of polite interest on his hatchet-like face when he sees Castiel hesitating at the threshold._

_"Ah. Hello, Castiel."_

_"Castiel?" The second man, eyes a faded blue, hair dark and threaded through with silver, looks up, then at his watch. "Oh, buddy, you are way early. Like, decades way early. What happened?"_

_"I was... shot?" Castiel phrases it as a question, because he's looking down at his chest and the shirt is whole and clean, the skin underneath unmarked when he pulls his collar away to examine it._

_The third man at the table is the rodent vendor. "Gee, Dad," he says, slumping back in his chair with a roll of his eyes. "You're right, this is all working out so well!"_

_He has wings. Castiel only notices when he moves, because the walls rustle and sway and Castiel realizes they're surrounded by them, layer on shifting, singing layer of deep crimson and dark ochre feathers._

_"Oh, like you helped at all," the second man snaps, dropping his cards on the table. "Castiel, what about Sam and Dean?"_

" _Sam?" Castiel says, then "_ Dean _," because Meg is going to_ kill him _—_

" _Calm down, birdbrain," the vendor says, standing up. The wall of feathers stirs and chimes faintly, ringing with the music of the Spheres. It's been so long since Castiel heard it. "Your little frenemy is coming as fast as his fat little legs will carry him."_

" _That is not how this works," the first man says reprovingly._

" _C'mon, I totally won this round," the second man says, gesturing at the cards._

_The first sighs, and the room subtly darkens. "I really have no idea why I tolerate this insolence."_

" _Yeah, well, fuck you too old man," the vendor mutters, flipping him the bird as he swaggers up to Castiel._

_Wings, wings everywhere, feathers smooth and glimmering like stones or scales. "Listen up, little soldier," the vendor says, eyes the gleaming topaz of a snake's. "If you were looking forward to retirement, tough titties. You've still got a job to do."_

* * *

Castiel jolts awake _— alive_ — with mud in his mouth and the first few drops of a bitterly cold autumn rain lying wet on his cheeks.

Crowley is standing over him, hand resting on the slope of Growly's invisible back. In his other hand a piece of staurolite sits, icy white light slowly dimming back to ruddy brown.

"Well, that was disappointing," the demon says. "I expected celestial pyrotechnics of some sort or another. Heavenly choirs. Flaming wheels. Singing cherubs, at the very least. On what occasions do those beastly things show up, anyhow?"

"Meg," Castiel gasps.

"Yes, Growly's been telling me how naughty you are, not mentioning that treacherous cunt works at your little pet shop," the demon sniffs. "Probably just an oversight, that."

"'m telling you now," Castiel wheezes, rolling onto his hands and knees in the cold earth. "Please help me stop her."

"Really, it would be my pleasure," Crowley says, watching as the angel struggles to his feet. "Do we have a plan then?"

"Find her," Castiel pants out, "Before she finds Dean."

* * *

But she's already found him.

The heavy steel bars and mesh fence wall have been ripped open, metal chewed and torn to jagged pieces by the maws of the hounds. They dance and jump around the trunk of the single old oak, baying and clawing at the branches that curl and twist like the tentacles of a kraken. Resting on one of the higher branches is Sam, ashen-faced and clutching his side where blood drips down in long dark ribbons.

"You know, I am almost one hundred percent sure I shot you," Meg says, finger on her bottom lip.

Laying in a bloody heap at the bottom of the tree, surrounded by snarling hellhounds, is Dean.

"No," Castiel whispers, walking slowly forward.

"Well, obviously," Meg answers with an eyeroll, and raises the gun.

" _No_ ," Castiel says.

"You said that already, Ji—"

Castiel's sword is just as he remembers it, alive and vibrating with intent as it sinks into Meg's chest. It grates down against her ribs before it pierces her serpent's heart, her eyes going huge in her girlish, lying face.

She drops where she stands, hands twitching up to grip the hilt, and Castiel walks on to where the puma lies, blood and viscera bright on the frozen ground around him.

"What the fuck is this?" Meg screams behind him. He looks back at her.

"Justice. And the will of the Host."

"An _angel_?" she howls. "Goddamn cocksucking—"

Crowley steps up then, to grind the blade in deeper with the heel of his shoe. "Die quickly, there's a love."

"You think this is over," Meg spits, shuddering as her borrowed body disintegrates into red-edged ash. "You think you've won. War is coming, angel, the war to end all wars, and you've just picked the absolute worst fucking side—"

Her face flakes away, revealing a skull the color of ancient stone, screaming silently for a moment before it, too, crumbles away into a pile of nondescript grey powder.

"Well," Crowley sneers, "that was astonishingly cryptic and vague." He gives the ashes a kick. With no prompting from his master, Growley lets nature call right in the middle of the sooty stain.

Castiel's vaguely aware of the hellhounds pulling back, of Sam sliding down off the branch, kneeling next to him on the hard sod.

"He held them back until I could get away," the young man says, voice thick with tears. "He— God, Dean—"

Castiel isn't aware he's crying as well until he sees the drops dampening the fur on Dean's cheek. He strokes them away with his thumb, and it occurs to him that this is the first time he's ever touched the cat without a crate or cage between them. His fur is softer than Castiel thought it would be.

"Dean is my brother," Sam says. "He's a human being, but he's been cursed. I did everything I could to change him back, but someone saw him and they hunted us down and brought him here. And now he's—"

No.

Oh, Father, _no_.

"Sam," Castiel says grabbing his shirtfront and jerking him forward, "Sam, what does he look like?"

_("Cas," the man murmurs against Castiel's fingertips, a hint of a laugh coloring his voice. "Tickles.")_

"Dean?" Sam asks, voice coming out shattered. "He's—older than me, shorter. He has green eyes—"

"And freckles," Castiel whispers, hand falling nervelessly from Sam's shirt. No.

He looks down at the lifeless body of the puma, blood freezing sharp and crystalline along the edges of the gaping slashes in his chest, along his flanks. Castiel slowly pulls the puma's head into his lap, smoothing his fingers over Dean's closed eyes, the whiskers at his mouth and brings his face in close.

"Dean." Tears scald his eyes. "I'm sorry," he says. Sobs.

( _"Brother. Brother, I have fallen in love.")_

"I'm so sorry, Dean, I—"

( _"I think I'm ready for the next part.")_

Castiel's vaguely aware of Sam beside him, and Crowley's grim shadow over his shoulder.

"I think you were my next part," he whispers, agonized, and kisses Dean's muzzle.

"Um?" Sam says, a small hiccup of sound.

Castiel's face is buried in Dean's neck, arms wrapped around his body. He doesn't respond.

"Um— Mr. Novak?"

"Sam, please," he murmurs brokenly.

Dean's body moves in his arms and for a moment Castiel thinks Sam is trying to move him away, and he grips Dean with all the strength he last left.

"Ow," the mouth at Castiel's ear says.

Castiel freezes.

"Li'l tight there, Cas. Having trouble breathing."

"... Dean?" he says, not lifting his head. Because if he's just imagining that voice— if he's dreaming again—

"Cas, seriously, I love you but I love oxygen too, okay?"

Castiel sits haltingly back, and there he is— Dean, bloody and bruised, but _alive_ , laying in the circle of Castiel's arms with a little grin that belies his flippant words. As Castiel watches, he shivers, gooseflesh breaking out over his skin.

"Holy _balls_ it's cold," _his_ Dean, freckles and all, says through chattering teeth. "Give me your jacket, Sam."

Sam's face is crumpling, his shaking hands coming up to grip Dean's arms. " _Dean—"_

"No, get off me, I don't want a hug, I want some motherfucking clothes!" he snaps, but Sam will not be deterred, and then all three of them are hugging each other so hard it might be leaving more bruises.

"Well, that's my cue," Crowley announces, edging away as if he's afraid they'll include him. "Glad that all worked out. I'll just be off. Oh, and Castiel? You owe me."

No one hears him, or if they do, they pay him no attention. Castiel only has eyes for Dean, and he's delighted to see the problem is mutual; Dean stares, apparently mesmerized by Castiel's face, and with his face squashed in next to theirs Sam says, "Uh, guys?"

They ignore him.

"Guys, it's one in the afternoon and hellhounds aren't exactly quiet. Somebody's going to come and— guys! Oh Jesus, my _eyes,_ Dean! Take the fucking jacket!"

* * *

"An angel," Dean says dumbly, wrapped in a scratchy wool throw Castiel dug out of his closet. "I've been touched by a freaking angel."

Castiel hands him a cup of instant coffee, and Dean gives him a deeply skeptical look. "You do remember you've literally spent hours telling me how much coffee sucks, right? This coffee in particular?"

"I did," Castiel says, happily. He can't stop smiling, and his smiles make Dean smile, make him sigh like it's a horrible inconvenience and set the coffee aside to pull Castiel down next to him on the couch.

Sam, sitting in a chair adjacent, leans in with avid interest. "You're an _angel_. That's amazing, that's— I mean, we knew there were demons, obviously. We've met Meg before, and— and she shot you. But you're— are you immortal? Is there a heaven? Is there a _God?_ "

"Ah," Castiel says. "Well. You see, we've been—"

Dean overrides him with, "Hey, can the big questions wait until I get some clothes on?"

Sam throws Dean a look and Castiel blurts, "Bitchface," because he's heard Dean describe it so many times but never knew what it looked like until now, and Sam's face goes blank with shock and Dean is sent into peals of laughter, leaning into Castiel's shoulder with his blanket sliding down to his hips.

"Your clothes? Sorry, burned them," Sam snips. "With how furry your ass was, I didn't think you'd need them anymore."

"That's right, you… how did this _happen?_ " Castiel says then, waving a hand at the frankly distracting acres of bare skin Dean has on display. "A puma? How—?"

"There's this asshole we run across every now and again," Dean sighs, taking advantage of his new position to nuzzle under Castiel's jaw, rubbing against it in a decidedly catlike way. "Goddamn Trickster. Fucking hate 'im."

"He's big on lessons," Sam adds. "Apparently Dean needed one."

"He told me how to break the curse, before he fucked off," Dean murmurs into Castiel's ear. "Thought it was the stupidest cure I'd ever heard of."

"What?" Sam says. "Dean, you never told me that."

"Kinda hard to sign 'true love' with paws, Sammy."

"True—?" Sam stares at them. "True _love?"_

Dean's not looking at either of them, face turned in to Castiel's shoulder and a blush working its way up his cheeks. "'S what I said, isn't it?" he mutters.

Castiel's chest is on _fire_ , joy burning cleanly through the terror, the sadness, the dull despair that's haunted him all these centuries away from heaven. He _understands_ , now.

"But… you've been a mountain lion this entire time, right?" Sam asks. "And you…? With _Mr. Novak_?"

Castiel lifts a hand to cup Dean's cheek and gently urge his face upwards; when Dean finally does look at him, flushed vividly red along the bridge of his nose, Castiel kisses him: lingering, open-mouthed exaltations.

"Guys, I am _still here_ ," Sam says, words half-strangled.

Dean ducks his head and his voice comes out a little unsteady as he says, "The real question is _why_ are you still here? Go get my clothes, bitch. Cas owes me pie."

"Jerk," Sam shoots back. "And Cas… Is that your real name? Cas?"

_("Listen up, little soldier.")_

"My name is Castiel."

_("You've still got a job to do.")_

"I'm an angel of the Lord," Castiel tells him, and Dean snickers into his collarbone.

"Yeah, 'cause that thing you do with your tongue is just so angelic—"

"Leaving," Sam says, covering his ears with his hands and making for the door. "So, so leaving."

* * *

It's different like this.

"Now," Castiel breathes into Dean's mouth. " _Now,_ Dean, I—"

"Angelic my _ass,_ " Dean says on a choked laugh, shuddering against him. "Yeah, now is good, now is— fucking _great_ —"

Different, and yet exactly the same. Castiel is greedy for this, for the affirmation that this is _his_ Dean, again and again and again: the starburst scar at his shoulder from a shotgun blast, the raised clawmarks on his hip Castiel can fit his own hand over and dig in as Dean moves; the green-gold of his eyes going dark and hazy, slipping closed when Castiel begins to move with him.

Castiel remembers the Voice of the Choir, the glorious harmonies that spun the planets in their orbits and made the stars shine, but he has never heard anything so beautiful as Dean's voice cracking as he groans, "Love you, oh God, so much."

"Love you," Castiel tells him back, means it with everything he is, everything he was. The world turns, and he is finally turning with it, his scraps of Grace twining themselves around Dean's soul so intricately and intimately they may never be separate again.

"I love you," he gasps, and surrenders to it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Alternate Ending:
> 
> 2\. Look, whit, look! :D
> 
> [](http://kototyph.livejournal.com/pics/catalog/504/8467)  
> 
> 
> 3\. [Sammy Hagar](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sammy_Hagar)
> 
> 4\. [Staurolite](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staurolite)
> 
> 5\. In light of season seven/eight developments with her character, I feel freaking _awful_ for the way I treat Meg in this story. There was supposed to be a sort of Taoism in the Crowley versus Meg dynamic, something like "Better an honest enemy than a false friend," but now it feels all OOC and weird. :( I love Meg, I really do! Next story, baby. Next story.

**Author's Note:**

> I need more fandom friends! Find me on [tumblr](http://kototyph.tumblr.com/) and [livejournal](http://kototyph.livejournal.com/).


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